Newslist For MMOValue

The dawning of another Saturday brings with it another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column delivered direct to your driveway by a paperboy who blinks from house to house, fending off overprotective guard dogs with the occasional conjured ball of flame and constantly demanding his two dollars (I really, really wish I could have found an actual clip of that, but yet again, YouTube has failed me). It’s all pretty impressive, especially when you consider that this paperboy is also wearing a dress.

Read more…

Kanghi World of Warcraft

The saga of Malfurion Stomrage continues in the latest book Stormrage by Richard A. Knaak. Today our friends at Simon and Schuster write in to let us know that the collector’s edition is now on sale for us all, in a limited edition of 5000 copies.

From the jacket:
Recently the Emerald Nightmare, an area of corruption within the Emerald Dream, began growing in size, transforming the Dream into a realm of unimaginable horror. Green dragons have been unexpectedly caught up in the Nightmare, emerging from it with shattered minds and twisted bodies. Druids who have entered the darkening Dream lately have found it difficult — sometimes even impossible — to escape.

Nor are these the Nightmare’s only victims: more and more people are being affected. Even Malfurion Stormrage, first and foremost of the druids on Azeroth, may have fallen victim to this growing threat. As uncontrollable nightmares spread across the world, a desperate quest begins to find and free the archdruid.
The collector’s edition costs $32 and will ship the week of March 8th, 2010; whereas the normal editions of Stormrage release on February 23rd, 2010.

Stay tuned to WoW.com in the coming weeks when we’ll have early reviews of the book for you, as well as an interview with author and Warcraft storyteller Richard A. Knaak.

Kanghi World of Warcraft

EVE Online has rung in the new year right, announcing a brand new peak concurrency record of 54,446 users logged into the expansive universe of New Eden. Thinking of having 3,000 players on a single server is mind boggling enough, but 54,446? Color us very impressed.

The announcement was a very subtle one, only appearing on the game’s official Facebook page so far, but CCP’s own server graph and the user data collected by third-party website eve-offline.net confirm the announcement. Congratulations to CCP and their very impressive server technology for pulling off such a feat.

So guys… speaking of new year resolutions… about that Walking In Stations thing…

Kanghi EVE Online

Today’s post-holiday Question of the Week for Earthrise concerns the game mechanics of being (and killing) criminals in the post-apocalyptic MMO. Players who opt to become felons will build up “Criminal Karma”, what seems to be a sort of quantified notoriety. From what the developers are saying, it seems that going outlaw won’t be a trivial choice, given such characters will be kill-on-sight in the more secure regions of Enterra island. Also, it may be difficult to wipe the slate clean if a character has a shady past.

According to Moll, the Earthrise Community Manager: “Criminals cannot clear their records, nor do they generate additional Karma by killing other criminals in safe zones.” She adds that criminals who hunt down other criminals won’t do so to repair their faction standings, rather there may be a good chance of obtaining loot by taking out a fellow wrongdoer. However, beyond such scenarios where ‘evil fights evil’, Earthrise’s law-abiding citizens will have incentives for killing the criminals of Enterra; successfully knocking off criminal players will garner them extra Contribution rewards (faction standing).

The Earthrise developers also stress that the game will have safe(er) zones where the general populace will be protected from criminals by NPC guards. Moll writes: “Extreme criminals need to really watch their back, though. They may suffer a chain of deaths if they are not able to protect themselves for the time needed for their record to clear itself. Criminals should most likely stay away from safe zones during this time in order to not trigger guards and to consider their previous targets, who might be ready for a little revenge.

Kanghi Uncategorized

While some are starting to shy away from the lands of Aion, others are taking advantage of holiday sale pricing to check it out for the first time. After all, servers are more stable than they were at launch, and NCsoft is addressing the botting and spam issues that have plagued the game since the earliest days — as well as the game being cheaper to purchase. Today we have another lovely Aion image, this time sent by a new face, Darkanx, who tells us a bit more about this scene.

Hi this is my first submission to One Shots. I’ve taken so many Aion screenshots just for fun that I figured I’d send one in. This is a picture of my Gladiator Darkanx in the Belusan Zone as I was just wrapping up some of the first quests you get when you arrive there. I’ve decided to go the route of dual wielding and its been a lot of fun because there are not many DW Glads on my server so it sets me apart. The only downside is that buying all the +crit manastones kind of burned a hole in my wallet for a while but it was way worth it. I also changed the appearance of my plate leggings to look like cloth because it just gives this sweet royal guard look.

If you’d like to send in an image, it’s very easy to do. Just email it to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a quick description. We’ll post it out here for everyone to enjoy and let you bask in the glow.

Kanghi World of Warcraft

So, wait a minute. If Strength on leather gear is going away in Cataclysm, how are feral druid tanks going to be itemized? Ghostcrawler’s got it handled.

We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won’t appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it’s not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes.
Ghostcrawler, you machine, you. First you tell us that all of these stats are just plain goin’ away in Cataclysm, and now you give us specifics? Such an industrious crab. But how is this change going to be carried out? Turns out he’s got something to say about that, too.

Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don’t worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change.
No kidding! Looks like a lot of thought is going to have to go into re-itemizing the game. Hopefully the same amount of attention goes into our talents to go with this expansion; I can’t wait to see more “fun” talents like they’ve been promising, stat changes notwithstanding.

Before you go, though — a brief moment of silence for “of the Tiger.” You were there when we needed a suffix, any suffix, for our DPS alts. Godspeed, you green emperor.

Kanghi World of Warcraft

There’s been a few achievements that have been added in the latest patch 3.3 build.

As you can guess, taking down the Lich King has its rewards. If you manage to defeat Arthas in Icecrown Citadel in 10-player heroic mode, you will henceforth earn the title “Bane of the Fallen King.”
A new faction for you to earn reputation with will be established as well. The Ashen Verdict, if you manage to earn exalted with them, will grant you a title reward that adds “Of the Ashen Verdict.” No serious details yet on how to grind out rep, but when I was on the PTR clearing trash to Festergut, I noticed I was gaining Ashen Verdict reputation by killing various mobs. They’re similar to the rates players earned rep with when working through Black Temple for the Ashtongue.
Arena players have a new title and a Frostwyrm pet to look forward to for season 8. Good luck on earning the Wrathful Gladiator title!
The players who are more into battlegrounds will be experiencing change as well. The achievements to gain exalted with Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley factions have been removed from their Meta-Achievements. You’ll gain special titles if you manage to reach exalted with the factions at least.
Glory of the Hero Meta-Achievement has been slightly changed. The Party’s Over achievement which involves killing Prince Taldaram on Heroic with under 5 people is no longer part of that particular meta. Although, personally I don’t think it’s that difficult to take out that boss with 4 players.
Lastly, in case you missed the news earlier, Master Angler of Stranglethorn has been changed. It will be changed to Master Angler of Azeroth instead. You can gain this achievement by winning the Kalu’ak Fishing Derby or the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.

Kanghi World of Warcraft achievements, News items

The Guild’s Twitter account is tweeting up a storm from the panel about our favorite Internet series at Comic-Con, and there’s a whole downpour of news already. Probably biggest is the news that Dark Horse Comics will be publishing a comic book featuring characters from Felicia Day’s show, penned by none other than Ms. Day herself. Details are still hard to find (there’s no mention of the book yet on DHC’s site), but we presume it’ll be about the real-life personas of The Guild folks, rather than a story about their characters. That’ll be interesting to see.

Other news from the panel is that Season 3 is coming soon, and it’ll feature a special guest: Mr. Wil Wheaton, former Star Trek annoyance (sorry, I didn’t like him at all), and current geek icon. Apparently they showed a sneak peek at the panel and a Jed Whedon-directed music video (featuring Vork spanking Codex and Tink dancing?), so as soon as we see either of those, we’ll be posting them here.

And finally, apparently Jeff Lewis (a.k.a. Vork) has announced that he’ll be marrying his wife in the game, though we have no idea if that’s a joke or not. With these Guild guys, you can never tell. Lots more news about season 3 to come, we’re sure, and of course we’ll see all of these folks at BlizzCon — here’s the interview we did with them last year. We’ve got at least one contact on the ground at Comic-Con this week, so stay tuned for more news from San Diego, too.

Kanghi World of Warcraft comiccon, comiccon2009, dark-horse-comics, felicia-day, jeff-lewis, microsoft, sdcc-2009, sdcc2009, sneak-peek, star-trek, the-guild, the-guild-comic, the-guild-season-3, vork, wil-wheaton, wilw

Our sister site Joystiq pointed out last night to their readers that the BlizzCon 2008 beta codes were now being accepted, and we thought it prudent to pass the news along to you.

You can enter the code over at http://www.blizzcon.com/beta and enjoy the satisfaction that you’ll get knowing in a few months (or less?) you’ll be playing the beta of StarCraft II.

The code took me a few others on staff a couple tries to enter. ‘B’ looks like ’8′, and ‘S’ looks like ’8′. You’ll probably need to try a few different permutations of the code until you get it right. When you enter the right code, you’ll get an email ‘confirmation’ that really just tells you that you’ve entered the key successfully. You don’t have to do anything further. The email is a little oddly worded though, and doesn’t look like your typical Blizzard email. So we’ve posted a copy of it after the break for folks.

BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd of this year. We’ll be there in force again. Should be a blast!
Read more…

Kanghi World of Warcraft beta-keys, blizzcon, blizzcon-2009, starcraft-2